Underground Railroad

The Underground Railroad was a network of secret routes and safehouses established by American abolitionists to help runaway African-American slaves in escaping to the free states of the north. The movement was run by free African-Americans such as Harriet Tubman and by sympathetic white abolitionists, and it helped in freeing tens of thousands of slaves from bondage. By 1850, 100,000 slaves had used the Underground Railroad to escape slavery, and many slaves would make it to Canada to flee America. The Fugitive Slave Act was passed in 1850 to fight against the Underground Railroad movement, and the law required for recaptured runaway slaves to be returned to their slaveowners, even if they were caught in the north.